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Upstatement

Boston, Massachusetts

According to Upstatement, they “make handcrafted websites that are elegant and easy to use.” In our opinion, this somewhat downplays their contribution to the fields of visual and interactive design.

In 2011, in collaboration with The Boston Globe, Filament Group, and Ethan Marcotte, Upstatement built one of the most talked about websites of the year. The project, to design a new website for a 100 year old newspaper, took advantage of a collaborative approach and utilized emerging technology to deliver “a newspaper site for the 21st century.”

The new Boston Globe website features a responsive design, which allows the user to comfortably view the site on the device of their choosing. The website’s layout responds to the device being used, but the experience is consistently pleasing and highly usable, and that’s what counts. Upstatement has two greatarticles on their blog that you should check out for additional insight into the design process.

Upstatement is Tito Bottitta, Jared A. Novack, Mike Swartz, Ari Rizzitano, John Boilard, and Bethany Heck. This small team of talented designers and developers have worked on several significant projects for museums, media outlets, and non-profits. In addition to The Boston Globe website, the Upstatement team has also produced websites for One Laptop Per Child, America’s Test Kitchen, Harvard Graduate School of Design, United States Holocaust Museum, and Dig Boston (which we mentioned in our feature of Tak Toyoshima).